Tot School - “The Little Rabbit”

- Adam is 33 months old -

This week for Tot School we read “The Little Rabbit” and used Before Five in a Row and http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ for activities to go along with the story.
We reviewed the ASL signs for carrot and baby (Buttercup the rabbit has babies) and learned the signs for rabbit, turtle, and butterfly (Buttercup encounters a turtle and a butterfly).

Above our dining room table we have a montage of my husband and my engagement pictures. One day during lunch, Adam looked up and said, “You’re signing turtle Mommy!” It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about…

The sign for turtle is to cover one fist with the other to make the shell and then wiggle the bottom thumb to make the turtle’s head. So I guess the picture of my hands does kind of look like I’m signing turtle! It’s so fun and rewarding to know that things I’m teaching him are actually sticking!

Here’s Adam signing turtle

Everyday we did a finger play and little song that we hopped around to like rabbits. Adam LOVED doing these each day! I definitely want to incorporate songs or finger plays into my plans now.

Adam hopping to “Did You Ever See a Rabbit”

Adam correctly colored Buttercup white (even the pink inside her ears that the book points out) and colored the wild rabbit brown. Again, it’s so fun to know that when we read a book he’s remembering and comprehending specifics of the story.

On Tuesday we went with some friends to a farm where I was hoping we could see some rabbits and to our surprise, not only were there rabbits but there was a white one just like Buttercup and a brown one like the wild rabbit. The brown one even had some babies!

We talked about animal babies and Adam glued pictures into a little book.

The illustrations in “The Little Rabbit” are real photographs so we talked about the different “views” of the rabbits and Adam copied those views with his alligator. We learned front view, side view, and back view

We worked on counting and number recognition by using a Carrot Math Mat that I laminated.

And for a snack, we had carrots and ranch. Yum!

Other Tot School activities included painting with Do-a-Dot markers. He spent about 2 minutes actually using the markers and the next 30 minutes lining up the bottles and then moving them to the other side of his art tray…

…then unscrewing caps and screwing them back onto other bottles. I actually didn’t know he knew how to unscrew them on his own!
Every morning I put milk into one color of cup, and then mix and match the lid and the straw. He always says something like, “A blue cup with a green lid and a yellow straw? That don’t matches!” (in a very funny tone of voice). So when I saw him putting different colored lids on different colored bottles, I just had to say, “A red lid on a yellow bottle? That don’t matches!” and ON and ON for about 20 minutes straight! He giggled and laughed as he unscrewed and screwed caps onto the bottles and I pointed out that they didn’t match. What a fun memory!

Drawing with Crayola watercolor markers

One afternoon we had fun in Adam’s room playing with the balls that go with his magnet set. It began with us tossing balls into a bin and making “baskets”… …then he pretended to be a dragon in a cave… …then he pretended the bin was a garbage truck that was dumping the garbage out. It is so fun to see his imagination grow!

We went to story time at the library and Adam was fascinated by the sign language interpreter that was there.

He played with beads and transferred them back and forth and then pretended he was making lunch and baking things in the oven. The “oven”
To enjoy the last remained days of summer, we went out for a walk and Adam rode his Strider Bike. He loves his bike!
On our walk he discovered a fire hydrant and was fascinated with it. With him being my first child, I am always surprised by how interested in EVERYTHING he is! It’s like the entire world is a new discovery and I am LOVING discovering along with him.

Down at the Farm

This week we met up with some friends at “Farm Country” at Thanksgiving Point.  Adam loved seeing the animals and running around with his friends Lexie and Dallin who are just a few months older than him.

We saw lots of animals and most of them were close enough to touch which Adam loved! 

 
This is “Buttercup”! 
We are reading a book called The Little Rabbit this week for Tot School and so I purposefully planned to try and see some rabbits the week we read it.  We were excited to actually see a white rabbit just like Buttercup in the story!

Feeding a cute baby goat

Adam, Dallin, Heather, and Susie on the
wagon ride

Adam and Dallin “in jail”
(Apparently I didn’t get any pictures of cute Lexie)

 

Abby was a trooper and was happy to chill out in her stroller

 

Brynlee and Abby watching each other….kind of

 

The 3 baby girls
(all born within 5 weeks of each other)

Brynlee, Susie, and Abby

 

The perfect way to end a trip to the farm….a picnic lunch and cupcakes!

Tot School – I Am an Artist

- Adam is 33 months old -

For Tot School the past week (well, 2 weeks) we read “I Am an Artist” by Pat Lowery Collins using Before Five in a Row as an activity guide. We reviewed and relearned the ASL signs for tree, leaf, flower, stars, apple, water, and rainbow. This book was actually more of a nature book than an art book, but it’s focus was on how everything around us is art.

For Family Home Evening on Monday night we briefly told Adam the story of the creation and how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were ‘artists’ when they created this beautiful earth and all the things that live here. I don’t know how much he understood, but we feel it’s never too early to begin teaching about God and the gospel of Jesus Christ!

The highlight of our week was taking a nature walk at the park. I had to show Adam how to find “treasures” and place them in his pail. I thought all kids instinctively collected things but I guess not! I made sure to be really excited and in awe of everything we found and soon Adam was also really excited about it.

After gathering some items, we played on the playground, which for Adam usually means just playing in the sand.

He eventually decided he wanted to swing and I thought it would fun to have Abby sit in there with him. She loved it! Adam, on the other hand, quickly grew tired of the slow swinging and demanded Abby be removed.

When we got home, we made a collage out of our nature treasures by taping them down onto paper. I think I liked this activity a lot more than he did!

On one page of the book, there is a picture of an apple cut in half, revealing the hidden star. Adam thought it was quite cool to see the star inside. Although he said it looked like a flower. I agree.

This is the face of a boy that has just eaten an apple seed. I was cutting up slices for our snack and when I looked up he was chomping on something with this weird look on his face. We had an impromptu lesson on not eating seeds.

I made a little book out of some drawings and paintings that Adam did.

I didn’t plan very many activities for our book this week because we had a play date at a children’s museum one day and I went out of town for a wedding on Friday. But that’s ok. Some weeks are more filled up than others and that’s how I like it!

Other tot school activities:

Melissa & Doug Beginning Pattern Blocks

Color matching file folder game from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Magnetic Thingys (can’t remember their name)
I tried to get him to match up all the colors but that only lasted about a minute…

so we built robots instead! And on another day he discovered that my computer chair was magnetic and turned my chair into a robot. He’s in to robots lately. :)

And of course there was play doh

Check out 1+1+1=1 for more great ideas on what to do with your tot!